With its wide-open eyes and mouth, and deeply furrowed brow, this highly characterful bronze face mask is a 19^th century cast of an ancient Roman marble, which, itself, would have been inspired by antique Greek or Roman tragic theatre. It very closely resembles the oversized marble mask that decorates a fountain in the Casa della Fontana Grande in Pompeii dating from the second century BCE and that was first excavated in 1826.